CityLab | Christopher Maierhttps://www.citylab.com/authors/christopher-maier/2016-09-23T17:17:04-04:00Copyright 2018 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.<p><span>On a cold Friday in February, Bobbi, a 74-year-old woman from Norristown, Pennsylvania, finds a quiet place to sit along the fringes of the main seating area at Reading Terminal Market in the heart of Philadelphia. She doesn’t have much going on, which is fine by her. She wears an easy smile and her eyes beam with curiosity as her gaze pans slowly across the expanse of tables, merchant stalls, and flow of patrons ambling through the aisles. </span></p><p><span>The market is a familiar place to Bobbi, who’s been coming here since she was young. She, her sister, and her mother used to stroll through the market together for hours, gradually weighing down their arms with bags of groceries as they went. These days, she often comes to the market alone or, occasionally, with her granddaughter, Tiara.</span></p><p><span>“I just come and look,” she says. “I like the people.”</span></p><p><span>But it’s not just the people-watching that draws her in. She often chats with familiar faces and even strikes up conversations with strangers—especially when she’s sitting at the bank of communal tables at the center of the market. And Reading Terminal remains her go-to destination when she needs to re-stock the fridge. “I like the food,” she says. “I like the cheeses. And I can get everything I want.”</span></p><p><span>Given all that Reading Terminal has to offer, she’s happy to take the 45-minute train ride from Norristown to Center City Philadelphia several times a week. Once at the market, she typically sticks around for four or five hours at a time. And when she’s run out of steam, she simply walks a block to 11</span><span>th</span><span> Street Station and boards the train back to home. She knows she’ll be back at the market again soon enough.</span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>For more than 120 years, Reading Terminal Market has been a staple of Center City Philadelphia. But not all of those years have been glorious. After enjoying remarkable success in its salad days, the market hit hard times again and again. By the 1970s, the market had fallen into full-blown disrepair. Only 20 percent of the vendor stalls were occupied. The marketplace lacked</span><span> air conditioning</span><span>. The city was threatening to raze the place. Reading Terminal’s marketing manager, Sarah Levitsky, recounts a story from the market’s history involving big, blue tarps draped from the ceiling to stop rainwater from coming straight into the building and soaking the few vendors and patrons still left. “You didn’t want to be unlucky enough to walk underneath one of those tarps when it gave way,” she says. </span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Given the market’s deteriorating state, demolition seemed like a reasonable option. But city residents weren’t having it. Many Philadelphians</span><span> cherished Reading Terminal Market, which sat just a few blocks from City Hall and contributed to the unique fabric of the urban center. The market’s owner—the Reading Company—recognized the value, too. In 1980, emerging from a period of financial instability and buoyed by the community support for the market, the Reading Company began to reinvest in the market’s infrastructure. Three years later, vendor occupancy had jumped to 60 percent. </span></p><figure><img alt="" height="282" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/09/Screen_Shot_2016_09_23_at_2.09.02_PM/43bfa92dd.png" width="620"><figcaption class="credit">(Christopher Maier)</figcaption></figure><p dir="ltr"><span>Today, filling the stalls isn’t an issue. Instead, says Anuj Gupta, the market’s general manager, the trick is deciding </span><span>which</span><span> new merchant to pull from the long wait list when a space does become available. Gupta hopes that the next generation of merchants continue the market’s focus on food but do it in a way that introduces new, engaging experiences to the space. He speaks enthusiastically about Condiment, a 2016 addition to the market, that prepares customized toppings, dips, and marinades onsite based on what customers have in their shopping bags—a concept-driven business that, he says, lets all of the market’s visitors affordably enhance the meals they make at home. Similarly, a state-of-the-art test kitchen allows people to participate in the art of cooking; the glass walls surrounding the kitchen allow shoppers to pause to watch the action inside and, often, to turn to the stranger beside them to comment on what’s happening on the countertop.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“We have an experience to sell,” says Gupta. And as a marketplace that has historically accommodated a broad swath of Philadelphians, he aims to make sure that the market continues to serve basic needs (like picking up groceries) and welcome all comers, even as the experience itself becomes more nuanced and modern.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>But not </span><span>too</span><span> modern, adds Levitsky. “We’re sort of old-world shopping,” she says—and in her tone, it’s clear that this is a point of pride.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“Aw, I love that place,” says Stephen, as he pulls away from Reading Terminal Market in his run-down Ford Explorer. Stephen drives for Uber and he’s carrying a passenger from the market to Philadelphia’s 30</span><span>th</span><span> Street Station. “I go as often as I can,” he says. </span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Stephen’s lived most of his life in West Philly, on the other side of the Schuylkill River from Center City. Though the market’s never been part of his own daily routine, he says it’s one of the most quintessential “Philadelphia places” that spring to mind. That’s in part, he says, because of all the unique regional cuisine like Amish baked goods and scrapple.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>When he and his wife were married, they had a candy shop at Reading Terminal provide sweets for the reception. “You can’t really find that kind of old-timey candy anywhere else,” he says.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>This emphasis on authentic regional cuisine and culture is something referenced often by Reading Terminal Market’s champions. This is no cookie-cutter market, they suggest. You couldn’t find this place—or its offerings</span><span>—anywhere else. It’s a Philadelphia institution and it reflects the many tastes and faces that make Philadelphia one-of-a-kind. </span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>History is everywhere at Reading Terminal Market. It’s on the walls: In the Rick Nichols Room—a sometimes meeting room/sometimes dining area along the market’s eastern edge—info-heavy posters chart Reading Terminal’s long story. It’s in the stalls: The wooden, flat-bed wagon that artist Marilyn McGregor uses as her shopfront dates back 110 years to the original Reading Terminal Market. It’s among the conversations: Ask somebody who works here about the place and before long you’ll probably learn that Reading Terminal Market is one of the oldest farmers’ markets in the U.S.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The ubiquity of this historical mélange provides a common thread that draws many of the market’s stakeholders together. Each person seems to know some part of the story and seems to take pride in keeping the narrative alive.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>History, then, is also a feature of the community itself. And it’s this sense of history and connection that’s one of the great unifiers at Reading Terminal Market—tying together the people who own the businesses, work at the businesses, and patronize the businesses.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Jimmy and Vinnie Iovine, who operate a produce market and a beer garden inside Reading Terminal, embody this. The unassuming brothers love to talk about the market from all sides, including history, business, customers, and family ties. Most of all, they love to talk about the community.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“This is not our market,” says Vinnie. He pans his eyes across nearby aisles full of shoppers. “It’s </span><span>their</span><span> market.” </span></p><p><span>As they begin to discuss plans to institute a customer-service training program for all new market employees (they’re part of the leadership team that oversees the market’s merchants), Jimmy notices a woman looking a little lost. His attention immediately diverts from the conversation to see if he can help the woman. When he realizes she’s looking for the restroom, he begins walking her in the right direction. This sense of concern and community is apparent among many of the people in leadership positions at Reading Terminal.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>A moment later, Tootsie Iovine-D’Ambrosia stops by. She’s Vinnie and Jimmy’s sister and owns Tootsie’s Salad Express, a buffet eatery at the market. (In total, 17 members of the Iovine family work at Reading Terminal Market.) Tootsie picks up quickly on the theme of community: “I have hundreds of customers I see every day,” she says, probably only slightly exaggerating. “I know I gotta look for Jackie and Randall. I gotta find Joan and her husband.” She talks about the time she nearly moved her family in with relatives so that customers who’d hit hard times could live in her house for a year or so till they got their lives back in order.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>As the Iovines exemplify, brief interactions at Reading Terminal Market quickly turn into conversations, and out of conversation grows a tangible sense of empathy among people of all backgrounds.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us,” writes essayist Leslie Jamison, explaining that it’s “a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves.” If this is the case, the Iovines—like so many of Reading Terminal Markets’ stakeholders—are choosing empathy in the extreme. And the result is a welcoming environment where all comers—from the young to the old, from the hard up to the well-to-do, from a vast swath of racial, religious, and geographic backgrounds—are treated like family.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“[The market] becomes everybody’s neighborhood,” says Jimmy. “And </span><span>any</span><span>body’s neighborhood.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Who comes to a place like Reading Terminal Market—a public space with very real commercial ambitions and economic imperatives—depends in large part on who feels they can afford to shop there. The staff at the market takes pride in ensuring that there are options open to all economic levels.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>You can see this commitment in the programming. For instance, the market’s test kitchen offers private and public events, as well as glass walls that allow all passersby easy opportunities to observe what’s happening, even during paid events.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The dedication to drawing in a wide population is apparent, too, in the widespread practice among market merchants of accepting food stamps. </span><span>In fact, Reading Terminal Market is the largest SNAP accepter in Philadelphia.</span></p><p><span>And there’s a sense of openness that comes with the location of the market—in the center of the city, confined within no single neighborhood and steps away from bus and rail transit options that carry customers to and from nearly anywhere in the greater metro area.</span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>About three or four afternoons a week, Joe, a 67-year-old retired professor, rides the Broad Street Line to within a few blocks of Reading Terminal Market and then walks over. He usually spends an hour or two in the market, eating an early dinner (and, when he can’t resist, a piece of shoefly pie from Beiler’s Bakery for dessert) before catching a bus to the city’s main library.</span></p><p><span>Joe’s a rotund man who doesn’t try to hide his affection for the culinary smorgasbord that the market serves up. Name a cuisine and he has a recommendation for you.</span></p><p><span>But it’s not just the food that draws Joe to Reading Terminal; it’s the people, too. He often sees former students or ends up chatting with strangers seated nearby. And even when he doesn’t end up in conversation with anyone, he’s buoyed by all the fascinating folks around him.</span></p><p><span>“There’s always an interesting collection of people,” he says. “And it varies.” For instance, summertime brings the tourists. Plenty of days see a cast of conventioneers rotating through. And plenty of other days, it’s just a panoply of Philadelphians doing their thing—not unlike Joe himself.</span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>There’s no single bucket that contains all the people who make their way through Reading Terminal Market. On the barstools at Beck’s (a Cajun café), a group of thirtysomething men—black, white, and Hispanic—line the counter, their work boots and coveralls lacquered in grime. Around the corner, at some tables in front of a German-inspired stall called Wursthaus, sit three black women in their 60s, casually dressed, chatting with a black man about the same age, </span><span>with a tweed hat and a long, wool dress coat. Three uniformed cops plop down at a table near Molly Malloy’s, the bar owned by the Iovine Brothers. A middle-aged Amish woman in a bright pink dress strolls alone through the market chatting on her mobile phone.</span></p><p><span>Whoever they are, the people at the market interact in the most basic sense: they move through and settle into the space with patience, courtesy, and often a smile or a quick greeting. People standing in long lines at Beiler’s Donuts or the Dutch Eating Place engage in chit chat (the long lines themselves a convenient topic of conversation). During busy times—Saturday afternoons in particular, as well as periods when the Convention Center, which is next door, sends swarms of people through the market—patience comes in particularly handy, as queues for popular merchants can be a hundred deep and the aisles so glutted that they feel almost impenetrable.</span></p><figure><img alt="" height="412" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/09/Screen_Shot_2016_09_23_at_2.15.08_PM/3b1bf509a.png" width="620"><figcaption class="credit">(Christopher Maier)</figcaption></figure><p><span>When the market’s a little less busy, longer or more intentional interactions seem to take place—among friends and strangers. People walk slower, browse more, and appear more amenable to small talk.</span></p><p><span>On quiet weekday mornings, groups of acquaintances (usually men) gather with newspapers, coffee, and what seems like endless fodder for conversation. The sounds of the men laughing or competing to make a point mingles with the aromas of smoke and cooking food </span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The bulk of the congregating happens in the communal seating area at the heart of the market. Here small tables are pushed together to form a vast bank of lined tables offering a few hundred seats, the perfect setting for regulars to meet and kick off the day. And when the market gets busy, the close configuration of the seating encourages visitors to sit near each other, to be comfortable with each other, to potentially even talk.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Around 12:30 p.m. on a busy Saturday in February, seats in the central seating area are tough to come by. Many people, after scouting and hovering for a few minutes, wander off to try to find one of the solo tables that line several of the aisles or simply to seek out a small patch of space where they can linger long enough to wolf down a quick bite.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>A middle-aged couple rushes toward a four-person table that’s just opened up. They grab it. And after they quickly settle in, they see a younger, twentysomething couple scanning the tables. The middle-aged woman waves an arm and motions to the two extra seats at their table.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“Are these open?” the younger woman asks, over the din of the other diners.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“As long as you don’t mind sitting with strangers,” the older woman says.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“Not at all!” comes the reply.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>A moment later, the two couples begin eating lunch together.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>It turns out Bobbi, the 74-year-old woman from Norristown, isn’t at the market alone. She’s been sitting by herself while she waits for her granddaughter, Tiara, to return from the restroom.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>At 22, Tiara says she doesn’t come to the market nearly as much as her grandmother does. She hints that it feels like it’s a spot for older patrons—something that the market’s general manager Anuj Gupta hopes to correct not only through more concept-driven offerings, but also through programming like free movie nights and affordable after-hours fundraising galas that play to a younger demographic.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Once people step inside, he hopes, they’ll see that there’s something for them—whether they’re young or old, rich or poor, picking up food or just looking to relax for a minute or two.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Or whether they’re 74-year-old Bobbi or 22-year-old Tiara.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Tiara says she can’t really say why she doesn’t come to the market very often. She looks around. It’s late in the afternoon on a cold Thursday in February and the market is starting to wind down. But nearby, a middle-aged couple steps away from the bar at Molly Malloy’s and dances their way into the main seating area. A pair of late-teen girls wander by, one asking, “How do you even decide where to go?” There’s a certain vibrancy to the place, even in the off-peak hours.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“This really </span><span>is </span><span>a nice place to hang out,” she concedes. And rather than get up to catch the train, the two women decide to sit and enjoy the market for a little while longer. </span></p><p dir="ltr"><span class="im"><i>This article was written with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of a broader examination of the challenges, opportunities, levers, behaviors, and mindsets that impact socioeconomic mixing in public spaces and the civic commons.</i></span></p>Christopher Maierhttp://www.citylab.com/authors/christopher-maier/?utm_source=feedChristopher MaierWhat Makes Reading Terminal Market So Special to Philadelphians?2016-09-23T14:29:00-04:002016-09-23T17:17:04-04:00tag:citylab.com,2016:209-501428Open for over 120 years, it’s as vibrant as it has ever been—and a magnet for every kind of local.<p dir="ltr"><span>It’s noon on a warm Saturday in April and West Philadelphia’s Clark Park is bustling. The playgrounds teem with young kids and semi-watchful adults. The Bowl, a football-field-sized crater that used to be a mill pond, is overrun with youth soccer players. A group of men in their twenties and thirties kick off a game of pétanque (a French cousin of bocce ball) in the park’s central plaza.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Perhaps the biggest draw of the morning is the farmers’ market, which lines the northeastern edge of the park along S. 43rd Street between Baltimore and Chester avenues. Well over a hundred people are lounging in the grass or wandering among the dozen or so stalls, which feature vendors selling flowers, jams, veggies, hoagies, and more. A teenage boy moves through the stream of shoppers with a guitar in hand. A pair of college-age girls take photographs of a folk band that’s started to play near one of the park’s entrances. Dogs—and the people walking them—mosey along the perimeter of the action.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>While the market is a magnet for many of the people who live in this part of West Philly, it also attracts folks from other parts of the city, the suburbs, and even out-of-towners who’ve heard of Clark Park and the celebrated Saturday (and a seasonal Thursday) market. Wherever they come from, the markets’ visitors seem charged to socialize. Friends spot friends. Vendors and customers drift into conversations that stray beyond transactional small talk. Strangers perusing the same baked goods stall or waiting in line at the Amish flower table spontaneously begin to chit chat.</span></p><figure><img alt="" height="413" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/09/Screen_Shot_2016_09_16_at_1.03.21_PM/a3047f4d0.png" width="620"><figcaption class="caption">Mid-morning Saturday in the central plaza at Clark Park. (Christopher Maier)</figcaption></figure><p dir="ltr"><span>Tony West, who’s been affiliated (in various ways) with Clark Park for about 30 years, believes that programs like the farmers’ market are especially successful at bringing together people who might not otherwise have a reason to rub elbows. “If [Clark Park] were just a place where people go sit down and relax for a couple of minutes, it would still be a popular park,” he says. “But having activity makes it a destination and gives people a structure for interacting with each other.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>At 71, Paul Foley has been familiar with Clark Park for many years. He used to live in the area, but migrated to the Germantown section of Philadelphia in the mid-1990s. Though he left the neighborhood, his love of Clark Park didn’t go anywhere. When the farmers’ market began in 1998, he had a weekly reason to come back to his old stomping grounds. Now he makes the hour-long commute from Germantown to Clark Park nearly every Saturday.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“On the weekends,” he says, “it’s a destination.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Spanning nine acres and serving as home to more than 300 trees, Clark Park has been a part of West Philadelphia’s University City neighborhood since 1895—long before the name “University City” even existed. Situated right beside the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia and not far from both the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, Clark Park has certainly been shaped by its educated neighbors. Beyond students and professors, the anarchists, pagans, punk rockers, hippies, artists, and intellectuals who’ve been nesting in West Philly for decades have been using the park’s public space for just as long.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The park and its environs own a strong—and troubling—working-class history, too. During the first half of the 20th century, the eastern portion of West Philadelphia (close to Clark Park) witnessed the influx of vast numbers of poor African Americans who sought affordable dwellings as well as refuge from the housing discrimination proliferating in other parts of the city. This area became known as Black Bottom. In the 1960s, the Black Bottom community was shaken up and pushed out by an urban renewal campaign led by Penn. This is when the name “University City” was coined. This when the off-center intellectuals and artists started to filter in. And this is when Black Bottom essentially disappeared from the map.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Today, Clark Park and the community surrounding it hosts a socioeconomically diverse mix of Philadelphians, though that mix is increasingly skewing wealthy, educated, and white. As of 2010 census, University City is roughly 50 percent white, 25 percent black, and 20 percent Asian. Approximately 73 percent of residents hold at least a bachelor’s degree. And the average home sale price is up from around $110,000 in 2001 to above $300,000 in 2011.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>University City (a name that some locals disparage and discard in favor of “West Philadelphia”) is a community with a deep history of change and adaptation. And, despite the friction and distrust bred out of the Black Bottom displacements, today it’s a community centered on tolerance and openness.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“West Philly has a history of social justice,” says 34-year-old Erin Engelstad, who’s a former president of the park’s leadership group, Friends of Clark Park, and current park stewardship manager for the Fairmount Park Conservancy, the organization that works to preserve and improve Philadelphia’s public parks. Engelstad, like many other champions of Clark Park, says that the park has been defined by an inclusive culture that’s been here for generations, and nobody wants to see that go away. </span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>It’s mid-morning on a Thursday in April. The sun is shining, but there’s still a chill in the air.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Erin Engelstad is sitting among a collection of tables and orange metal chairs that are scattered throughout Clark Park’s central plaza. Each of the chairs has “Clark Park” stenciled on the seat back—a marker that doubles as a branding device and a theft deterrent.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>On this day, most of the 30 or 40 chairs go unused. The park itself is largely quiet. A pair of women pushing strollers enter the park at the northwest corner and slowly make their way toward the playground, where most of the morning’s action is taking place. A man sits alone on a park bench. A group of college-age kids cut through the park carrying coffees from Green Line, a stylish café nearby Clark Park that bills itself as “West Philly’s stop for coffee, culture, and conversation.” A woman lets her dog off leash to run through the grass.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Weekday mornings at Clark Park can be quiet, especially before summer officially sets in. In these moments, the park seems like a serene neighborhood respite, not unlike most parks in Philadelphia or in any other city. But, as Englestad begins to rattle off the list of activities that happen here, it’s clear that the park’s energy ebbs and flows. She mentions the Saturday farmers’ market, the monthly Uhuru flea market, the annual Woodland Avenue Reunion, a summer movie series, and the Dickens Day Celebration. (For reasons not entirely logical, Clark Park boasts one of the world’s only statues of Charles Dickens.)</span></p><figure><img alt="" height="413" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/09/Screen_Shot_2016_09_16_at_1.06.49_PM/f1debfb2f.png" width="620"><figcaption class="caption">Customers sitting outside of Green Line Cafe. (Christopher Maier)</figcaption></figure><p dir="ltr"><span>Programming is a major contributor to the vibrancy here at Clark Park. Engelstad herself became involved with the park more than a decade ago when she moved to the neighborhood and decided she wanted to use all of the greenery as the backdrop for a noise-rock concert. With guidance from Friends of Clark Park, she submitted a permit request to the Department of Recreation, forked over a $25 fee, and the concert moved forward. This morphed into an event called Best Fest that she and six friends (all of whom moved to West Philadelphia from Virginia) ran at the park for the next six years.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The fact that Engelstad not only attends programs at the park, but has also initiated programs, reflects one of the characteristics that’s been fundamental to Clark Park for the past half century: This is a place where neighbors are encouraged to feel a sense of collective ownership, where shaping your own experience is exactly what you’re supposed to do.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>There are more than 150 city parks in Philadelphia and 111 of these benefit from a “friends” group, an organization that helps manage, maintain, and program the park as well as providing a community voice to the Department of Parks &amp; Recreation and other stakeholders.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Friends of Clark Park is especially active. In total, their website names 18 West Philadelphia residents who assume organizational roles ranging from president to youth soccer committee chair. They are, in essence, park stewards. And as such, they find themselves thinking about nearly every aspect of the park, whether it’s time to buy new tables and chairs for the central plaza or to set the schedule of events in any given season.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>By imbuing neighborhood residents with a sense of duty and obligation, Friends of Clark Park creates a core leadership that feels a genuine sense of ownership over the park. This place is their responsibility. If it falls into disuse or disrepair under their watch, fingers will point their way.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>In 2001, the Friends of Clark Park produced a long-term “revitalization plan” that called for a range of infrastructure improvements aimed at making the park a more welcoming place for all residents. As a result, gone are unnecessarily circuitous pathways in favor of sidewalks that more logically lead visitors through the park. The towering maples that once kept major portions of the park in near-perpetual shadows were scaled back to allow for more light, more openness, and more safety. An old playground was moved to a different part of the park and an unused flagpole was ditched to make room for a new central plaza that now serves as a stopping place for everyone from chess enthusiasts to lunch breakers to pétanque players.</span></p><figure><img alt="" height="413" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/09/Screen_Shot_2016_09_16_at_1.11.18_PM/166c79c10.png" width="620"><figcaption class="credit">(Christopher Maier)</figcaption></figure><p dir="ltr"><span>With a fresh face, the park began to attract even more attention from neighbors and community organizers. Over the past 15 years, requests for event permits have exploded.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“We have so many special events scheduled that we can’t fit any more in,” says Tony West, who, among other things, chairs the park’s subcommittee on large events.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>These events contribute to Clark Park’s increasing identity as a destination—as a place that people from around the city and beyond seek out, whether for the Saturday morning market or a Thursday night dose of </span><span>The Two Gentleman of Verona</span><span>.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>While the spate of programming brings new people with diverse interests to the park for reasons commercial, cultural, social, and more, it also means that park sometimes feels more like an entertainment venue than a serene place for neighborhoods to mingle.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Michael Nairn, a professor of urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a Clark Park neighbor, wouldn’t mind if there were a little more peace and quiet within the confines of the park. Standing amid a flow of shoppers at the Saturday farmers’ market, he’s catching up with Lisa McDonald Hanes, the recently dubbed president of Friends of Clark Park as well as a neighborhood resident and a landscape architect who helps design the park’s impressive array of plant life. “It’s programming, programming, programming,” Nairn laments. “If you look at this place, there are events constantly—some are planned, some are unplanned.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Hanes agrees. “There are too many events,” she says. “The city doesn’t allow it to be open, passive space.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Even if they wouldn’t mind a little less activity, they both recognize that the diverse slate of programming gets people out of the house and into a place where they can interact. “On Saturday, the park is the neighborhood living room,” concedes Nairn.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>And of course, if they swing back on a weekday morning, they’ll find that Clark Park is serving up serenity in spades.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The Bowl, which sits in the park’s center section (also known as “B Park”), was once a pond that powered a pair of nearby mills. Today it oscillates between being a soccer pitch, a Frisbee field, a fenceless dog park, and a free-for-all kid zone.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Raushanna Thompson, who’s in her mid-30s and works as a personal trainer, comes to The Bowl most days of the week to let her dog, Splash, get some energy out. Thompson moved to the neighborhood six years ago but says she never really spent time at Clark Park until two years ago, when she adopted Splash.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>She and Splash typically hang out for an hour or so at a time—and she says she frequently strikes up a conversation with other dog owners who come to the park on a similar mission. The chats rarely go deep or last long, but they do establish a connection. Over time, she says, she’s come to recognize faces and to feel like she has a stronger bond to her neighbors.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“The dog bridges the gap,” as she puts it.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>On Saturday mornings from spring to fall, The Bowl morphs into a youth soccer extravaganza. A crater in the ground the size of a football field, The Bowl is teeming with toddlers in jerseys—and parents who are cheering on their kids and catching up with the other parents.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The Clark Park Youth Soccer League, which was started by community members, draws in young athletes from all of the surrounding neighborhoods. To ensure that no families are left out, the fees for the season are $20 for the first child in a family and $10 for every additional child.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>After soccer wraps up, parents leave The Bowl chatting as their kids run off ahead of them. At quick glance, you can see a range of backgrounds represented: black, white, Asian, Hispanic; dads in name-brand fleeces and moms in worn-out jeans. Half an hour later, some kids are still dashing around near the playground, shrieking and laughing as if the day has only just begun.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Spruce Hill, Squirrel Hill, Walnut Hill, Garden Court—each of these neighborhoods nestles close to Clark Park and, undoubtedly, contributes its residents to the broad array of Clark Park users. </span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The convenience of transit breaks down participation barriers that might stand firm if Clark Park were a little harder to reach. The Route 34 trolley comes from Center City and drops riders right at the northeast corner of the park. Three other trolley routes include stops nearby. The Route 42 bus—one of the most used bus lines in the local transit system—picks up and drops off passengers just a few blocks north of the park. Baltimore Avenue, which forms the northern edge of Clark Park, sees a steady flow of traffic.</span></p><figure><img alt="" height="413" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/09/Screen_Shot_2016_09_16_at_1.05.19_PM/eda048d4f.png" width="620"><figcaption class="caption">Health Center 3, a vital public health hub for many members of Philadelphia's struggling African community, is located just across 43rd Street from the park. (Christopher Maier)</figcaption></figure><p dir="ltr"><span>And the mix of businesses, services, and institutions that reside close by contribute undeniable diversity to the Clark Park’s community. The University of Sciences in Philadelphia sits next door and even leases the southeast corner of the park. The HMS School for Children with Cerebral Palsy abuts the park, too—its presence in the community evident at the playground, where specialized swings have been installed to enhance accessibility. The University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University are also in the vicinity, each adding to the student population that’s hard to miss at Clark Park. Health Center 3, a vital public health hub for many members of Philadelphia’s struggling African community, is located right across from where the farmers’ market sets up; many of the center’s users move through—or pause in—the park as they come and go. A spate of new and thriving restaurants, cafés, and businesses along Baltimore Avenue have an almost symbiotic relationship with the park. On any given day it’s hard not to spot someone walking with a cup of something caffeinated from Green Line, the coffeehouse by the park’s northeast entrance.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Like other favorite Philly destinations such as Reading Terminal Market, Clark Park enjoys a luxury of location that keeps its base of users varied, replenished, and always coming back.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“Where’s that?” asks Larry McNeil. He’s referring to Clark Park.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>McNeil sits at a small desk inside the front door of the Kingsessing Recreation Center, where he’s one of the recreational leaders. It’s 3 p.m. on a spring Saturday and the rec center itself is relatively quiet. The building also houses a theater area and a boxing facility that, on weekday evenings, is packed to the gills. Outside, 20 or so guys are playing pickup basketball and eight boys are in the middle of a loose game of football.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>On this day, Kingsessing’s users are 100 percent black, like McNeil himself. He explains that most of the people who spend time at Kingsessing come from the neighborhoods immediately west of here. Though up the street from Clark Park, this is an area that’s more economically depressed and witnesses significantly less foot traffic.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>After learning that Clark Park is just a handful of blocks away, McNeill just shrugs. “I never heard of it.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>If you spend a few minutes hanging around the Friends of Clark Park table during a nice Saturday at the farmers’ market, you feel like you’re part of a social club.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“If I sit here for four hours,” says Tony West, “I will see the Republican representative come by, the Democratic representative, the—” His sentence trails off as a neighborhood resident and former Friends board member, Brian Siano, steps up to the table to say hello.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>The 53-year-old Siano, a white guy, is wearing a jean jacket and sling bag beneath his gray tousle of hair. Siano, who holds an office administrative job at Penn, grew up in suburban Cherry Hill but has lived in this part of West Philadelphia since 1983. He’s done a stint on Friends of Clark Park board and he’s a regular participant in park events.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Asked about the composition of the neighborhood, Siano describes a housing incentive program through Penn that offers sizable cash contributions for employees who buy a home close by. This has “brought in families and professionals,” he says, and resulted in a closer knit community composed of “pretty well educated” folks.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>He describes the park itself as “an urban Garden of Eden. Everyone is welcome here.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span><span>Being welcome, though, is not the same as being present. Siano notes that the area south of Chester Avenue is more economically depressed and that members of those communities use the park less and are less likely to assume leadership roles in Friends of Clark Park.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>“I’ve heard people say we’re a white folks group,” Siano admits. And he posits that the park itself “is becoming less diverse.” A few moments later, he adds, “It’s homogenous in a way that I kind of fit into. I don’t want to disparage something that I benefit from.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>There’s no question that many people—Siano among them—benefit from the spectrum of official and ad hoc activities here at Clark Park, as well as opportunities to do everything from bumping into a neighbor to meeting a stranger to taking the family to the playground or walking the dog or simply finding a quiet patch of sunlight that’s perfect for reading a book. But as the neighborhood continues to change, park and community leaders may have to work even harder to ensure that Clark Park is a place that all West Philadelphians will call their own.</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span> ****</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>What makes Clark Park the singular place that it is today? It’s a mix of so many factors, from history to location to the impact of an eclectic collection of users including “anarchists, Quakers, and professors,” says Friends of Clark Park President Lisa McDonald Hanes. “You can’t recreate the elements here.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span>Siano agrees. While there may still be room for improvement at the park, there’s also plenty to appreciate. “In some ways,” he says, “we’re just really, really lucky.”</span></p><p dir="ltr"><span class="im"><i>This article was written with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of a broader examination of the challenges, opportunities, levers, behaviors, and mindsets that impact socioeconomic mixing in public spaces and the civic commons.</i></span></p>Christopher Maierhttp://www.citylab.com/authors/christopher-maier/?utm_source=feedChristopher MaierWhy Clark Park Is West Philadelphia's Social Magnet2016-09-16T14:07:00-04:002016-09-16T16:11:19-04:00tag:citylab.com,2016:209-500231<span>In spite of changing demographics around it, easy access and diverse programming still make it a welcoming place. </span><p><span>Art-inspired urban redevelopment is popping up </span><span>along Chicago’s South Side. You see it on Garfield Boulevard in Washington Park. Around Dorchester and Kimbark avenues in Greater Grand Crossing. It’s happening on Stony Island Avenue, a little more than a mile west of Lake Michigan’s shoreline.</span></p><p><span>It roots itself in unlikely places like a once-dilapidated bank that hadn’t been active in more than 30 years, a recently shuttered currency exchange office, a retired beer warehouse, and a housing complex that had been shuttered after the city couldn’t find a way to stymie the violence that had permeated the site.</span></p><p><span>This constellation of projects is the brainchild of Theaster Gates, an internationally lauded artist, urban planner, community organizer, program administrator, and university professor. He draws on his array of skills and interests to give shape to his work in several neighborhoods in south Chicago. With each new building, he adds not only a revitalized structure to the surrounding neighborhood, but a space where visitors are encouraged to gather, observe, spectate, learn, and land themselves in interesting conversations with new acquaintances.</span></p><p><span>In a December 2015 conversation with the <em>Chicago Tribune</em>, <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-mag-how-to-2016-theaster-gates-20160103-story.html">Gates said that</a> the city </span><span>has “wasted opportunities that are waiting to be beautiful again, and I'm giving them a charge.” The artist continued:</span></p><blockquote>
<p><span>“It's not so much that the buildings on Chicago's South and West sides are vacant, but that they started to lose value for the black community. These buildings had so much soul, but we imagined that, because of the violence and the schools, we should be somewhere else. So these buildings lost their soulfulness. I'm interested in showing there is still so much latent power in these buildings, and by simply making these spaces available again, and open again, great things can happen.”</span></p>
</blockquote><p><span>Big things are absolutely happening. Not only have Gates-led projects brought a spate of new development to Greater Grand Crossing, they’ve helped propel investment in excess of $42 million in the neighborhood. What’s more, these spaces are bringing together people who may not be used to crossing paths, whether it’s neighborhood residents who’ve never spoken to each other before or visitors who trek to the South Side from other parts of Chicago and beyond to check out the unique design of the spaces, to take in something from the endless calendar of events, or simply to see for themselves what all the hubbub is about.</span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>The whole thing began back in 2006, shortly after Gates landed the role of director of art and public life at the University of Chicago. Not long after this, he bought his first piece of property. It’s a small, quirky home along Dorchester Avenue in Greater Grand Crossing, an economically impoverished neighborhood just a mile south of the University of Chicago’s affluent Hyde Park community. Gates began hosting events in the home, cultural gatherings and cinema screenings in particular. When the house next door began to fall in on itself, he bought that, too, eventually turning it into a sister space for conversations, creative initiatives, neighborhood gatherings, and artist retreats. Over the ensuing decade, he’s purchased and refurbished dozens of buildings, ranging from houses to housing complexes to, recently, a former Catholic elementary school. Along the way, he started the Rebuild Foundation, an arts and community revitalization 501(3)c.</span></p><p><span>Gates and his colleagues frequently refer to their collection of efforts as “an ecosystem.”</span></p><p><span>“Neighborhoods need to be healthy,” explains Lori Berko, chief operations officer at Place Lab, a Knight Foundation-sponsored and Gates-directed initiative of Arts + Public Life at the University of Chicago. “You’re not healthy because you have just this one thing.” For this reason, she says, the ecosystem that Gates spearheads is decidedly “multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary,” bridging city blocks, community narratives, and individual interests.</span></p><p><span>The spaces that make up this ecosystem range from Black Cinema House (a free, weekly screening that takes place in the same building as Gates’ private art studio in Greater Grand Crossing) to BING (a for-profit, avant-garde bookstore located along the University of Chicago-owned Arts Block in Washington Park). Of the spaces in this part of Chicago, the Stony Island Arts Bank and the Currency Exchange Café stand out as magnets that draw together people of various cultural and economic backgrounds, whether they live miles from one another or just doors away.</span></p><p><span>And that’s part of the magic in Gates’ work: pulling a range of available levers to get people to engage with the work and each other. The projects combine intentional design with versatile programming. They pair accessible civic activities with overtly for-profit initiatives. They serve the neighborhood while inviting outsiders to come on in. They honor the past while making very clear that there’s a new future on the way. </span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>“Amazing,” says Cara as she glances around the interior of the Stony Island Arts Center. Cara, a 32-year-old black woman who lives closer to downtown with her young son, recently left an office job with the Chicago Transit Authority to begin undergraduate studies at Harold Washington College. She’s planning to finish her final two years at DePaul University, where she’ll earn a degree in urban development and planning. That’s why she was so eager to experience one of Gates’ spaces in person.</span></p><p><span>A professor of hers suggested she check out the Friday afternoon House Tea Ceremony, a free social event featuring a curated selection of world teas and music from the record collection of late legendary DJ Frankie Knuckles (a collection that’s housed in the bank). Though she came alone, she found no shortage of conversation, and that seems to be by design. </span></p><p><span>The tea ceremony is held in a cozy area with a wooden bar just behind the main gallery. As new folks arrive, they’re greeted by one of several volunteers, which seems to encourage dialogue from the get-go. Most of the 15–20 other guests who wander through the tea ceremony between 4 and 6 p.m. receive a similar greeting and, like Cara, end up chatting with folks they hadn’t known before they arrived. Some—like painter Arthur Wright, who also holds a fellowship at the Arts Bank—are regulars. Others, including a group of early twenty-somethings dressed in thrift-store-hip attire, arrive as first timers with questions and cameras at the ready.</span></p><figure><img alt="" height="402" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/09/Screen_Shot_2016_09_09_at_3.30.29_PM/cd7d6642a.png" width="620"><figcaption class="caption">Painter Arthur Wright leads a session on how to tap into your inner artist at the Stony Island Arts Bank. (Christopher Maier)</figcaption></figure><p><span>As the twenty-somethings leave after hanging around for an hour or so, they most likely see Wright, who’s now dancing alone in the bank’s main gallery, his eyes closed as he sweeps across the room to the house-music beats from one of Frankie Knuckles’ old records.</span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>The programming at the Stony Island Arts Bank covers a lot of territory. Over the course of three days in early May, the space hosted two jazz performances, a public cello rehearsal, a tea ceremony, a program that lets community members help catalog books in the bank’s library, an event featuring oral histories from South Side residents, a talk led by an accomplished photographer, a workshop conducted by an accomplished painter, and a building tour. On top of that, an ongoing exhibition of paintings by the late Noah Davis kept light traffic flowing in and out of the building during off hours.</span></p><p><span>Whether attending the Thursday night jazz concert or the Saturday morning oral history sessions, visitors almost always see Anansi Knowbody, gallery coordinator at the Arts Bank. Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, the 35-year-old Knowbody first arrived in Chicago in 2004 to study film at Columbia College, before migrating south to earn an MFA from Southern Methodist University in Texas. He’s been back in Chicago now for twelve months and working for Rebuild.</span></p><p><span>Knowbody says that the variety of programming at the Arts Bank attracts a broad cross section of visitors.</span><span> Sometimes these people strike up conversations with one another and other times they keep to themselves, just perusing the art or scanning the book spines in the bank’s nonpareil library.</span></p><p><span>“People tend to interact only as far as a social event will allow or encourage,” says Knowbody. Events like esoteric music performances by musicians-in-residence may only draw in a specialized crowd of music connoisseurs. But other, less proscribed events invite a wider range of visitors who are free to shape the experience for themselves and offer the sort of undefined experience that lends itself to striking up a conversation with the person sitting next to you. It’s something Cara experienced at the tea ceremony.</span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>Mikael David is a 29-year-old Chicago native who grew up in Bronzeville, an historically African-American community on Chicago’s South Side, before he and his family moved a few dozen blocks away from downtown to South Shore in 2001. He still lives in the South Shore neighborhood, where he’s become a regular attendee and volunteer at many of the Rebuild Foundation-sponsored events. He’s quick to point out the “many layers” of Rebuild’s work: art, commerce, real estate, programming, archives, mentorship, and more. It’s this variety of interests and influences that lets the Rebuild projects feel more like an integrated ecosystem than a collection of discrete spaces.</span></p><p><span>David admits, though, that when he first stumbled upon Rebuild (and the full gamut of Gates’ work) a year-and-a-half ago, he didn’t understand the complexity of the efforts. He had simply heard that there was a guy in his neck of the woods gobbling up a bunch of real estate and doing some wild stuff with it, which, as an aspiring real estate professional, caught his attention. “I was like, ‘Why? Who is this guy?’ I had no idea he’s one of the most important artists in the world right now.”</span></p><p><span>Now he’s well aware of Gates and his programs, which David tries not to miss. On a Thursday night in early May, he’s in attendance for a pair of jazz performances at the Arts Bank. The next day he’s back at the Arts Bank for the tea ceremony before heading over to the Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative to help facilitate a youth chess club. That night, he and Knowbody arrive together at Black Cinema House. On Saturday, he returns to the Arts Bank, where a variety of programs are in effect.</span></p><figure><img alt="" height="413" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/09/Screen_Shot_2016_09_09_at_3.11.43_PM/a2376cc2a.png" width="620"><figcaption class="caption">Washington Park mural along Garfield Boulevard. (Christopher Maier)</figcaption></figure><p><span>“It’s totally changed my life,” he says, speaking not only about the ecosystem of programs, but about the overall approach to “ethical redevelopment,” a term that Gates and the Rebuild team have coined to describe empathetic, intentional, historically conscious investment and development in struggling neighborhoods.</span></p><p><span>David sees this South Chicago brand of ethical redevelopment as something that begins with experiencing art and grows into something more all-encompassing. That is, it comes with the potential to change the direction of lives for the better and, over time, to alter the course of entire neighborhoods.</span></p><p><span>He talks in particular about the youth culture in his neighborhood: the shootings, the drug dealing, the lack of respect for other people, and the absence of ability to sculpt a fruitful vision of themselves in the future. “These kids today have lost their minds,” he says. “They have lost their minds</span><span>.”</span></p><p><span>Greater Grand Crossing’s Rebuild projects, he says, are offering these kids a new way to think, a new way to see the world, a new way to interact with a more varied group of people who can demonstrate different possibilities.</span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>During a quiet Thursday morning in May at the Currency Exchange Café, you see patrons ranging from college-age students slouched behind laptops to young women slowly strolling through the dining area with cameras to academic and activist Barbara Ransby thumbing through her phone over a cup of coffee as she sits in front of the large windows that face out onto Garfield Boulevard.</span></p><p><span>The following morning, before the lunch rush picks up, the café is quiet. Four people—all in their 20s or early 30s—hang out at the bar, laughing and talking with the baristas. They’re relaxed, but don’t stay long. Back by the more secluded tables in front of the kitchen, two women, also in their 20s or early 30s, sit with their computers. This morning, all of the patrons are black, which reflects the population of this part of Chicago as well as the audience that Gates’ projects tend to court. That said, over the course of the next several days, the mix of patrons’ racial, economic, and geographic backgrounds is tough to miss. From an older black man in worn, simple clothes sitting by himself with a cup of coffee to a professionally dressed trio of white women hunched over paperwork, the crowd is mixed. </span></p><p><span>“We have a lot of regulars, plus a lot of people who follow [Gates’] work and the other artists here, too,” says Imani Bonne, a 29-year-old barista and waitress who’s worked at Currency Exchange Café for a little under a year. “And we get a lot of play from the university, students and professors from the university. And people from Hyde Park in general wander over here.”</span></p><p><span>The following afternoon, a group of women in their late 50s or early 60s—two black and two white, all dressed casually—walk into the café. One of them turns to her friends and wonders aloud, “This used to be an actual Currency Exchange, right?”</span></p><figure><img alt="" height="464" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2016/09/Screen_Shot_2016_09_09_at_3.42.41_PM/5a0e86a08.png" width="620"><figcaption class="caption">Inside the Currency Exchange Cafe bar. (Christopher Maier)</figcaption></figure><p><span>“Correct,” interjects a smiling Bonne, who overhears the question. “We kept the name, added some tables, and gave it a try.”</span></p><p><span>“That’s so cool,” the woman says. She turns to her friends: “I’ve never been anywhere like this.”</span></p><p><span>This sort of interaction is common at the Currency Exchange Café. Employees rarely miss the opportunity to greet someone new as they come in, encouraging them to find a seat wherever they’d like or to just belly up to the dry bar. Some of the more popular seating includes the pair of long, rectangular tables that stretch through the center of the room. Even when the dozen or so other tables are largely unoccupied, you’re likely to see the communal tables filling up and patrons saying hello to their table-neighbors between sips of coffee. That said, after the occasional friendly exchange, most people get back to the activity that brought them into the café in the first place: catching up with friends or knocking out some work or simply enjoying a quiet moment alone, watching the L train come to a stop at the Garfield Avenue station across the street.</span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>On Friday night, about a dozen people turn up at Black Cinema House, an expansive book-lined room with a well-equipped audio/visual system. Black Cinema House shares an address with Gates’ private art studio. The building itself is a former beer warehouse and sits at the edge of railroad tracks in Greater Grand Crossing, which is one of the ten most violence-ridden communities in the city of Chicago. On this night, though, the weather is mild and trouble feels far away.</span></p><p><span>Guests trickle in between 7 and 7:30 p.m. While the attendees do vary, most are black and most are women. Everyone is gathering to watch and discuss Douglas Sirk’s </span><em><span>Imitation of Life</span></em><span>. The evening is led by University of Chicago professor Jacqueline Stewart and Northwestern University professor Miriam Petty.</span></p><p><span>When the film ends, the professors say a few words about not only Sirk’s film, but also the original version of </span><em><span>Imitation of Life</span></em><span>, directed by John M. Stahl in 1934. When the room opens up to Q&amp;A, a woman sitting off to the side begins to tell a story about watching the original film with her mother. She describes the ridiculous racial characterization of one of the film’s main characters. Three women—including one who’s at least old enough to be this woman’s mother—all nod in agreement. The professors add to the concord. And as the conversation deepens, it’s hard not recognize how much all of these women have in common, despite the fact that, in their everyday social circles, it’s very unlikely they’d ever cross paths.</span></p><p><span>At the heart of all of this sits creativity, and that’s something we shouldn’t lose sight of, says Isis Ferguson. “It’s neighborhood development through art.”</span></p><p><span>But what’s offered </span><span>through this Gates-inspired ecosystem isn’t necessarily accessible to all. Not everybody has the wallet for one of the several-hundred-dollar art books lining the high shelves at the BING bookstore. And not everybody has the appetite for avant-garde, jazz-inspired music that musicians from France and Chicago brought to the main hall of the Stony Island Arts Bank one Thursday evening in May. </span><span>Specialization is balanced by the $1 coffee at the Currency Exchange Café and the laid-back, unstructured vibe of the Arts Bank’s Friday afternoon tea ceremony. And with these low-barrier-for-entry experiences, this ecosystem implicitly invites visitors to learn a little more, dig a little deeper, and expose themselves to something slightly more esoteric. All while remaining in their personal comfort zone, whatever that might be.</span></p><p><span> ****</span></p><p><span>The Currency Exchange Café got its name from the actual currency exchange shop that existed in the same space before it. </span><span>The Stony Island Arts Bank was once the Stony Island Savings &amp; Loan. In each of these names, there’s a deference to history and a healthy appreciation for the notion that forging ahead doesn’t have to mean forgetting what’s behind.</span></p><p><span>Which makes sense. After all, Gates seems to be most comfortable at that shaky intersection between the past and the future, where an abandoned bank becomes a vibrant arts center, where crumbling homes become community meeting spaces, and where burdened neighbors are reminded that the people and places surrounding them have remarkable potential that’s just waiting to be tapped.</span></p><p><span class="im"><i>This article was written with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of a broader examination of the challenges, opportunities, levers, behaviors, and mindsets that impact socioeconomic mixing in public spaces and the civic commons.</i></span></p>Christopher Maierhttp://www.citylab.com/authors/christopher-maier/?utm_source=feedChristopher MaierCeiling and bulbs at the Stony Island Arts Bank.Building Up Chicago's South Side Through Ambitious Art2016-09-09T16:09:00-04:002016-09-12T13:15:46-04:00tag:citylab.com,2016:209-499019A <span>constellation of projects initiated by Theaster Gates has helped create new energy in an economically devastated—and socially isolated—part of Chicago.</span>